Category: Staff | Southern Dharma Retreat Center

Falling Into the Sunset: An Interview with Tracey Huger, 2021 Resident

October 18, 2021 By Southern Dharma Staff

The following interview between Tracey Huger, 2021 Resident and Sonia Marcus, Executive Director was recorded in February 2021. Tracey describes herself this way: Tracey Huger, originally from the Bronx, continues to travel through the South in search of new unique experiences. Tracey served as a Resident for 6 non-consecutive weeks, focusing on racial awareness and equity planning. We love and miss you, Tracey!

Portrait of Tracey Huger at Southern Dharma

SM: Considering that we're a couple of people who grew up in New York City and from backgrounds that had absolutely nothing to do with Buddhism, it's kind of funny that you and I would meet here this year. So how did that happen?

TH: Yeah, it's the Universe.

SM: How did that happen to you?

TH: Well, I've had some meditation training a few years ago. I went to a 10-day course [Goenka] that was pretty intense; and after that, I really didn't practice very much.

Last year, I took a six-week course on mindful meditation, and since then, it's been incorporated, not necessarily in formal sits, but in the way I was seeing things. The space that it created and in the attention to the now, basically.

When this opportunity [Southern Dharma Residency] arose, I was like, "Oh, that's pretty cool. I do like the outdoors." There was also a special project attached to it that I'm particularly interested in right now. All of that together made me try this out. The first couple of days here have been really interesting.

SM: Will you share more about that?

TH: It has been eye-opening; and one of those experiences that, once you absorb the space, you also really see who you are.

I learned that in my first 10-day meditation course. There, I was super defiant for absolutely no reason. I was imagining breaking out of the campus in Montreal that was in the middle of nowhere. But there was no way I would be able to get back home because they had driven me there! So, then I thought, what was I breaking out of? Nobody is keeping me here. I realized that I was defiant then.

Here what I noticed is my natural tendency to be academic and study. There's not a lot of people here because of the Covid restrictions. So, I just happened to pick up a book and began voraciously reading. That's what I needed to do.

SM: Guilty confession: Many meditation teachers at Southern Dharma will tell you not to read any books while you're on retreats, but I have read some of the best books here at Southern Dharma when I was on retreat.

TH: I was reading [Eckhart Tolle's] The Power of Now. It is all about stillness and an appreciation for now. As a New Yorker, whenever I have idle time my brain just really goes. I read 100 pages the first night. I couldn't get enough of it.

During the 10-day sit, I didn't have access to anything. I was sneaking paper to try to write in the staircase. I understand the value in that part because it gives you the separation. But there's also a stillness that allows you to deeply understand, especially if you're reading something that's a program or appropriate for your current situation.

SM: I can tell you I was the same way, and still am to some extent. I thought I would essentially cogitate my way to understanding Buddhism and meditation. The practice has also been huge but it isn't necessarily the thing I was initially drawn to. I was captivated by the concepts.

TH: I think because I had some sort of meditation experience as a child I connected to the experience of it. It overlaps with my spiritual and religious background as well. I did not have a religion as a kid, though I'd been around people who had religion. So, I had some ideas of what they kind of do.

Until I was about 12 I thought I was Christian. Then somebody told me the tenets of Christianity and I was like, "Oh, no, that's not me."

So that's been my experience with meditation, where I had already had certain experiences and I didn't have a language for it.

SM: You were telling me about when you were growing up that you had the feeling that you were meditating, but didn't know what meditating was.

TH: Yeah, a good portion of my meditation started from watching sunsets. We happened to have a fantastic view of Manhattan from where we were in the Bronx. I could see the George Washington Bridge and a little sliver of the Hudson River. It was just beautiful. Every night I would just watch the sunset.

At some point, it just became like I fell into the sunset. I really can't explain it. It was a stillness that felt like I was going into a vacuum, and from that space things were clear.

I could see the people in their apartment buildings and the people on the street. I thought, why aren't they aware of this? How could my family be doing things behind me, like watching TV, when this was happening?

I maintained [the practice] from 7 through 18, when I finally left our home. It was just like this thing that I had. It didn't really make sense to me why other people weren't tapping into that.

SM: Let's go from there to talking about the South. You're seeing the South when you come to Southern Dharma, right?

TH: I came from New York through Atlanta. Basically, when you travel, you recognize what to expect of who you are. I got a taste of what it means to be a New Yorker in other places. Some of it is language. Certain words that I say, identifying me as New Yorker that other New Yorkers gravitate towards. So we tell our stories.

SM: 'You guys. You know.' Those are the ones for me.

TH: There's that sort of being, out of knowing I'm not originally from here. But I do have some roots, my parents are Southern. I'm comfortable with the culture and certain things that I can kind of relate to. But I've never experienced rural South except for my family's farm in the plains of South Carolina.

This is very different. This is quite rural and a little... creepy. By the time I got up that interesting road, my thought was, "Well, I really hope I like these people because it's not going to be easy to get down!" Then there's a degree of commitment that's nice. Whereas if it were just across the street from a major highway, then it's like, "OK, if I don't like this then I'll just go."

But it's also really beautiful. There is a little spot here carved into this wonderful thick forest in the mountains. You're not just going up the mountain, there's a degree of leaving something behind. That's beautiful. This is a safe container, which you can use to explore various things.

SM: I remember when you arrived, you called your sister to let her know you had survived the trip.

TH: Yeah! I told her about that one lane road, but it's a two-way lane and it's very close. It's like the edge where you can totally fall off and you know, you have to go. And it's like a leap of faith.

After all that, she's like, "Why are you there? Why did you do this to yourself?" I replied, "I like adventure". I know myself. I learn about myself as much as I do about the space I enter.

SM: When we were talking when you first arrived, I was just so delighted to hear you comparing it to a couple of other experiences you had of being in the Adirondacks and the Australian Outback. But this is your country. And it's not just your country, it's the region where your parents were born and raised, you know what I mean?

TH: Totally. But what I did in the Adirondacks and the Outback felt more akin to this. I went to the Adirondacks from the city by going that far north. That was just incredible and beautiful. But it has a different feel. This feels more rustic. I don't think "downhome", because that sounds derogatory, but it really is. It feels less manufactured in some ways.

Then when I was in Australia, we traveled through serious outback. There's nobody for days and you're on a dirt country road with big dust storms. You need to make sure you have all your supplies because nobody's going to help you if you break down and don't have water.

So that's what I meant when I compared the experiences. And in some ways, that's scary. But for me, it was sort of like you get a sense of your humanity. It's the limits of being human and the need to really rely on others in certain ways and also prepare. And that's the feeling I got, even though there are resources available. There's a seriousness about this that is different from those other experiences.

SM: Another difference with outback Australia is here you're driving past houses that have Confederate flags flying on them.

TH: As an African American, there's always the fear that big cities are a little bit safer than other areas. But I try my best not to make assumptions because there's a cultural difference.

In New York, I used to say to Jewish people I would encounter - and I hope this isn't offensive - "Are you a practicing Jew or a cultural Jew?" There are practicing conservative and orthodox Jewish people. Then there are a lot of people who are what I would call culturally Jewish - they don't have a history of practicing, but they still identify as Jewish.

That's kind of the South as well. There are people who see the Confederate flag as part of the culture in the South. That could mean sort of like "rebel", or it's tied to their culture. And then there are those who take it as White Supremacy.

How you approach and identify them - you can't bring your assumptions there because you may get a response that's not reflective of who they are. If you encounter a white supremacist, most of them are not going to bother you. You can identify those who don't really want to be in your presence. You just leave it. What if you offer an openness? If they're not that type of person, they'll appreciate it. That's really beautiful. It's likely you'll find some sort of common ground and you'll leave there knowing that everyone within that situation is not what you think. They'll get some sort of appreciation of where you are, who you are, because they've had a real experience. I'm open to that. I've heard lots of stories, but I know how to approach people. You give them a chance.

SM: So you trust in your open heart on some level? That you'll connect with other open hearts and that ultimately trumps everything else?

TH: Yeah, it really does. You have to give it a chance because if you approach them with this sense that that's not going to happen, then it probably won't.

What was more sort of strange to me were all the Trump signs. That's more of an association. I thought that was interesting and wondered how they relate to me. Once again, there's various reasons why one would affiliate with one [political] party.

SM: Talk to me about coming to meditation from a different background than many others.

TH: From an African American experience, although I don't represent all African Americans, my experience in my culture is that meditation, yoga, all those sorts of practices are not celebrated. They're not well known from our perspective. We haven't adopted it. Therefore, there's a distance there.

Then there's expectations. Sometimes when you go into [meditation groups], not only are you not necessarily represented, but it also doesn't feel like it reflects you in a lot of ways. Once you enter that space, depending on how welcoming it is, you can go beyond that. It becomes a part of what's available to you as opposed to a cultural difference.

You're entering the culture of that space. You can adopt it and find a way that's very personal. I found that here. Definitely. I've noticed there are certain spaces that are so warm within its community, within meditation and yoga. They are naturally warm. Everyone is accepted.

When you think about it too much, you're separating in a way that's not necessary. You end up taking an idea that's from a white dominant culture and you should be accepted in every space. It changes to mean you're accepted because of your culture. I don't have that expectation. It's almost like the white bar that just gets dipped in chocolate. Now it's black. Yeah. That's not true understanding.

SM: That's right. Because that's not inclusion.

TH: No, that's not inclusion. It's nice to come into these very warm spaces where it's not just Black or White. We're dealing on a different level.

SM: I'm glad you felt that way while you were here. Let's come back to something you were saying to me about how, in African-American culture, things like yoga and meditation or maybe other types of alternative wellness or spiritual alternatives are not necessarily part of the landscape. It's that there's a certain level of distrust, right?

TH: Absolutely.

SM: I was wondering if you could say a little more about that.

TH: Well, within our cultural traditions, Christianity plays a huge part. There's a sense of a direct [spiritual] connection within the yoga and meditation traditions that make them feel very different [from the belief in Jesus]. Like, it may not be something that can be adopted and still maintain one's Christianity - which is not true. It's not a dogma. It's a perspective that actually weaves well into Christianity and other sorts of religions but it must be embraced as such before one can see that.

Then there's the way it's been marketed as sort of an elitist practice or for a particular type of person. If one doesn't want to be that, that can feel like a barrier. In work and academic spaces we often find ourselves not being the dominant group or in small numbers, but we can pretend those spaces are neutral by focusing on the work, the knowledge or our performance. Yet, in the yoga and meditation space the practice itself can feel like a cultural experience, and we're not necessarily going to want to adopt a different culture. Once again, if one gets past that first layer, the actual practice itself is available to everyone; but one has to want to, and feel one can, make that jump. It's like the knowledge in the classroom that is available to everyone, if one gets past the artifice of elitism that exists around it. Those barriers or limited access points, they're not really necessary.

SM: I always think of it as the packaging that goes around it. It's like the practice itself is just light. That's all, just light. It doesn't have any cultural dimension or real religious dogma, necessarily. Some can put this box around it that says that it's for these people and it's done this way. But once you break that open, it's just the light that's shining.

TH: Yeah, and we focus on the package so much.

That's how I can speak to that Southern person with the Confederate flag and find common ground. I'm waiting to find out what's cool and neat about them. It's like a beauty. Once I find that, I'm super excited because it's like, "Oh, I have that, too! Ok, now we're going to speak on that shared level."

Then, it becomes clear because I've gone through the steps of kind of understanding who they are. The language - I already know it. It's not like I'm trying to translate it. We're both speaking the same language. Even if I stumbled a bit, we already broke through the barriers and vice versa. I know we're trying to work on this level, so, I will say, "I don't agree with this or that; but we're both still here." I love that!

SM: I think that's the heart of the South.

TH: Yeah, it is.

SM: Tracey, you applied for a residency with us and you expressed a particular interest in working with us on anti-racism work, racial diversity, inclusion and equity. Say more about that.

TH: Well, 2020 has been an interesting year and the summer was definitely racially charged. There was sort of an awakening, an opportunity for people to really think about how to deal with racism in this country. As a result of that, I was getting so much information, a lot of it from social media, and I felt disheartened by it. At the same time, my white friends were approaching me and wanting all this information.

I noticed there were a lot of books and these beautiful reading and watch lists. But, for me, it was slightly overwhelming. I couldn't imagine feeling a sense of urgency and being directed to read a list of books. So, I developed a website [studentsneedteachers.com] with the hopes of encouraging others to feel the pain of racism. I want people to feel it and understand that that feeling is what will drive their curiosity because they'll have a more innate knowledge of it.

The site starts with short, powerful videos. The first talks about the history of racism and systematic oppression by Kimberly Jones. She does this analogy to Monopoly that's just beautiful. The next one is a young man, who looks like a child, talking about a list that his mother gave him and he's been forced to learn. Not every kid has to do that but Black people are burdened with adjusting to unfair systems. The last video poses the question of complicity. An educator, Jane Elliott, makes an audience aware of a difference in treatment that can't be denied, and suggests it is now their responsibility to do something about it. She broke it down so beautifully. This is the problem, and we have to move forward because inaction is consent. So this was my mindset. After George Floyd, we're all aware there is a bad situation. I was gathering all this information with the hopes of helping others gain a way into the issue.

When I saw the Residency, I thought I might be able to combine the spirit of my meditative practice, with a taste of the interesting culture that exists here, while learning how cultural awareness could be incorporated into it. I could get information about the needs of the community and what it feels is lacking, because it's not about pushing out information. It's seeing where curiosity is, what gaps in information there are, and how we can make the experience personal - because that's important.

SM: What are the key things that you're taking with you from this experience that started with driving up into the mountains and going up the crazy gravel one way road?

TH: Well, I am aware that I am definitely from the city. (laughs)

Mostly, I felt the importance of not erasing our differences in the service of peace. Also, if I continue to explore anti-racism, my meditative practices can inform it. However, to be effective, I'll also have to confront and explore my own racial traumas.

SM: Thank you, Tracey. It was a nice conversation to have with you. I'm looking forward to delight in your ongoing journey and your insights. Thank you for letting us share Southern Dharma with you.

Takeaways from our Gender & Accommodations survey

May 16, 2021 By Southern Dharma Staff

In February 2021, Southern Dharma asked our newsletter subscribers to participate in a (highly unscientific but still very informative) survey on gender & accommodations. The survey seeks to inform Southern Dharma's practices around the assignment of housing options and how gender does (or doesn't) play into that. Our intention is to maximize the housing we have available for as many retreatants as possible, and also to be accommodating of diverse needs and diverse genders.

We asked respondents to kindly set aside concerns about snoring, since snoring is something that people of all genders can be prone to, and we already ask a specific question about that on our registration form.

As of mid-May 2021, we received 74 responses, partially summarized below by question:

So, what are my key takeaways from this (and some further analysis)? What are the things I feel that we need to keep in mind when making changes?

Only women said that they would insist on sharing a space with someone of the same gender, whether it was the dorm or the double bedrooms. Those who felt this way still represented a minority of the respondents, though a majority of female respondents would at least prefer to be housed with other female retreatants if not insist upon it.
People are apparently more sensitive in regards to sharing the double rooms versus the dorm spaces on the 3rd floor, which offer privacy partitions.
People who have been on 4+ retreats have significantly stronger preferences to be segregated by gender. It's possible that this is due to the fact that they are older but we did not ask people to identify themselves by age in the survey.
Several female respondents specified that they consider anyone who identifies as female as female, regardless of their birth sex.

In the open feedback question, we received some additional requests to "please take extra care of gender nonconforming people. Making effort to ask what they need to feel safe and comfortable." We also received some appreciation for asking these questions at all.

We may make a decision based on the feedback to allow people of all genders to share the dormitory space (rather than restricting it to females), and use the double rooms on the 2nd floor to house retreatants who either prefer or insist on sharing space with someone of the same gender, especially females. This will allow us to adapt more flexibly to registrations for any particular retreat, rather than restricting admission to individuals of a particular gender in order to fill our remaining spots. We will also discuss whether single kutis or tents could be blocked off for retreats until we determine that someone does not have a critical need for a solo space, rather than just a preference. These could be, for example, gender nonconforming individuals who do not feel comfortable sharing sleeping space at all.

Feel free to comment on this post if you have thoughts to share on the results. We are also open to receiving more responses if you haven't yet participated in the survey, but would like to. Thanks in advance for completing the survey by June 1, 2021, at which time it will officially close.

Questions? Contact [email protected].

Coming home to Southern Dharma, coming home to myself

May 16, 2021 By Southern Dharma Staff

By Teresa (Tere) Todoroff, Winter Resident

Don’t meditate to fix yourself, to heal yourself, to improve yourself, to redeem yourself. Rather, do it as an act of love, of deep warm friendship to yourself. In this way there is no longer any need for the subtle aggression of self-improvement... Instead, see meditation as an act of love. - Bob Sharples

What would it taste like to befriend each moment, love every morning of transition, the mess, miracle, even the mundane? Sweet spaciousness. Coming home. Patience.

Six weeks at Southern Dharma have provided a precious and pregnant pause in a time of great turning, loss, and possibility. Days full of reflection, community, intentionality and orienting towards the possibility of an integrated and joyful sense of belonging. As winter now downshifts, the daffodils drive our gaze towards bright buds and wet earth.

I remember the cloudy day of my arrival on the land - it was a Sunday, and it felt slow. El arte de dominguear. My favorite art of “Sundaying” (as a verb, a quite passive one). The winter air breathed a break, before the beginnings of a new week and a new snow that would soon arrive and cover the land in a candy-like, white foam, much different from what I had just experienced in the New Mexican high desert. The pleasant air and soft sun hosted our lunch out on the picnic tables in front of the lodge as I overlooked this new valley, this new home. Squash soup the color of a favorite yellow sweater, homemade kimchi with yacon, and some fresh sourdough. Yes. I’m home.

Since that first drive up West Road in late January, we’ve chanted the Recollection of the Triple Jewel just about every morning. Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. Treasures. Teachers. Timeless. Our daily 8am practice periods, often with the fire roaring in the wood stove, grounded this heart, this mind, this body. What a gift to sit with friends. To hear each other’s voices and honor our silences. To dedicate merit and support our ever evolving practice of coming home to our true nature.

Over the last couple years, chanting has been an act of love, nourishing this mysterious journey and path of practice of “mine”. Sounding sacred syllables sends me into the devotional depths. It feels ancient, it moves energy, it opens my heart and sometimes cracks it. Growing up Catholic, singing at church felt like one of the few enjoyable aspects of weekly mass. “Make me a channel of your peace, where there is hatred let me sow love”.

One of my favorite Pali words in the Triple Jewel chant has a nice feel coming out of the throat: Akaliko. I like the way the “ka” comes out first, then the “ko”. Eenie-meeni-miny-mo, a ka-lee-koh. It is often translated as timeless.

The dharma is timeless, and yet… The calendar pages continue to turn as my settling deepens here on this special piece of Appalachian forest. My time here grows shorter as the days grow longer. There is a beginning, middle and end to everything, and this particular iteration and configuration of beings, of seasons, of timelessness is coming to an end.

So many moments, even the mundane ones, have felt imbued with magic, with dhamma and blessed with the good fortune of spiritual friendship. Walking from the hall to the lodge after a morning sit, brushing our teeth together before bed, staff meetings with songs and bells, Qi Gong in the meadow, poetry and ukelele on the knoll, snow angels, game nights, movie nights, quiet nights.

As I reflect on this time of coming home to my practice, opening to a new community, sensing the beauty of a new landscape, gratitude and appreciation washes over my heart. For all those who tended to this forest for millennia past, who created these buildings with love, and who practiced whole heartedly: Thank you. I carry this time, this healing, this simplicity, within me and around me and aspire to share these timeless gifts of coming home with all.

Even with summer
So far off
I feel it grown in me
Now and ready
To arrive in the world.
-David Whyte

My time as a winter resident at Southern Dharma allowed for a rich, opening experience in dhamma and community. I feel so grateful for the space, sangha, and safety that held me. I am a mixed race Latina and bilingual Spanish speaker. Having benefited from BIPOC and YA scholarships in the past at other retreat centers, I am delighted that SDRC has opened up additional funding for folks! The opportunity to practice in this lifetime is a precious jewel and my wish is that the Buddha’s teachings continue to flourish to more diverse practitioners. May all beings be free and have access to the path of liberation. Thank you SDRC for encouraging our under 30 and BIPOC friends to practice.

Kimchi, and Reflections on Processing Abundance

January 6, 2021 By Southern Dharma Staff

by Anthony Pranger, Dining Manager and Program Coordinator

My view of abundance as a child was basically materialistic. Abundance meant having all the stuff I needed or wanted, and there were many times growing up where that was not my reality. As a young adult, I came to understand that the more common view of abundance was the means to obtain those resources and amenities. In both of these views, financial security and accumulation are the desirable end result, and I have struggled with these sets of conditions. It wasn’t until 2020 that I actually began to see abundance in a less material or strictly positive way.

When we cancelled our residential programs indefinitely because of the global coronavirus threat, I had already purchased food for our first couple of retreats. My work during the days that followed was to prepare and store the ingredients as best I could, in order to stretch their longevity and minimize food spoilage and waste. You could probably see this potential downside of abundance as ‘quite the pickle’, although that’s not the correlation I was going for. Sure, we have a couple of freezers and both a commercial and residential refrigerator, but enough food to feed 35 people for a week or two can become a challenge to disperse amongst 4 or 5 people, especially when it’s mostly fresh produce. With the additional question of the kitchen manager’s job being essential or not, suddenly an abundance of food was a potential problem. On top of that, other things became more and more abundant as well, like confusion, misinformation, and uncertainty.

All of my relational challenges - both personal and professional - were suddenly in abundance, and despite what appeared to me as a clear invitation to slow down, my proximate world seemed to do the opposite. I remember a retreat I sat a few years ago, and most of that retreat experience was colored by extreme physical, mental, and emotional agitation and discomfort. I had a lot of difficulty staying with the instructions for mindfulness of breathing, concentration, and stabilizing the mind, and I remember in one of my interviews with the teacher, he recommended that I just do loving-kindness meditation for myself and/or someone for whom offering metta was relatively easy. I also knew from experience that physical activity could soothe a restless mind. I dislike wasting food, and I love both making and eating kimchi, so I set out to process my unexpected abundance.

Kimchi (click for Southern Dharma recipe) is a vegetable ferment traditionally made by cultivating the lactobacillus naturally occurring on the leaves and other edible parts of cruciferous (cabbage family) vegetables. Kimchi is also usually made with salted shrimp paste and fish sauce, but I make a vegan version with miso and tamari. The basic idea is to submerge the cabbage in a brine for a few days, allowing no oxygen in, then move the container to the refrigerator for another few days to slow the fermentation process down. The container and the process are far more important than the initial quality of the produce, so while you don’t want any mold or rot to go into your ferment, the vegetables, fruits, and herb ingredients can be less perfect in their look and how you chop or slice them.

To me, this fermenting process seems a lot like what happened to me on that retreat. There was an abundance of things in my daily life that accumulated unprocessed, until I went on retreat and surrendered into a structure and a container that were designed for that processing to occur. I still struggled for most of the 9 or 10 days of that retreat, but when I settled into the reality of my difficult thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations, the remainder of the retreat revealed some of myself to myself. When I left that retreat, there was still plenty of evidence of how I was before, but the invisible changes had also melded into a me that could withstand the next long while. I wouldn’t exactly say that I soured; maybe more accurately, I united some seemingly divided and dissident parts of myself and integrated them into my being. The coarse became crisp and inseparable from the fine, and I took on a character that included the pieces, but I was also irreversibly more.

The themes of adaptability and resilience came up again and again throughout the 2020 at home retreat season. Our teachers were bringing much needed offerings in the forms of group practice instructions, one-on-one guidance, and applicable wisdom teachings. Meanwhile, as I navigated my ever-changing role at the center, many more accumulated conditions bubbled to the surface. I was asked to greatly scale back my kitchen activity in favor of focus on at home retreats, and I learned how much of my work satisfaction was attached to my choosing the kitchen as my livelihood. My full-time status came into question numerous times throughout the season, as I tried to reconcile what I was able and willing to do, and what would bring my family and I joy and ease in life. And after venting unskillfully a few times, I remembered my previous retreat experiences, where I learned that it was okay for my experience to be uncomfortable and for me to be challenged by it.

I can certainly understand the day-to-day challenge of spending time processing fresh produce. It’s not even because it’s particularly difficult in and of itself, but it is time consuming, requires concentration and timing, and it is difficult to multitask while brushing, rinsing, chopping, and slicing. Over this past year, I was triggered many times at the suggestion that these activities were less important and less valuable than so many other activities in our organization. It is similar, in fact, to the suggestion that spending time in meditation or heart practice is less important and less valuable than productivity or other activities in our daily lives. I will admit that my strong inclination for more than half of the year was to spend more time processing food, emotions, thought patterns, and all of my other personal karma, and less on other organizational needs. Some of my mental and emotional traumas in fact demanded that I give more attention to myself, and there is a limit to the amount of time and energy that one can spend in a day.

Then I reached a new (for me) practice edge: it’s not just okay for me to experience challenge and discomfort, but also that those are regular contents of moment-to-moment experience, and that they are also not the whole experience, even when they dominate some portion of it. They’re kind of like chili peppers in that way: they add an intensity and complexity that in the right amount can skillfully balance the other flavors in my kimchi! Challenge and discomfort can support and develop habits of caution and also push my awareness out of some of my older and less skillful habits. I still find it very challenging when my feelings are strong, even overwhelming, to skillfully do other things, and I find my emotions less overwhelming when I dedicate some regular time to observing and learning about them.

And, when we started inviting people to do onsite volunteer work, with meals, I found my well processed and aged kimchi to be a delightful go-to, where I had already done the work and the whole community got to enjoy the finished product. Of course my abundance of kimchi (I made a batch big enough to fill a gallon-sized jar) didn’t last forever. I’ve even made another batch since then, which has also been consumed. But the process is still alive, ready to be applied to more produce when needed. And, thanks to our efforts this year and the help of our whole community, there is abundance in our ability to continue offering quality dharma programs. There is abundance in the spirit of our community to continue to adapt and support each other as the abundance of challenges and other things continues to roll into and out of our lives. It may not always be the best to begin with, but we can always do our best with it, and trust that processing an abundance of whatever comes our way, will also keep us fed for the next while.

Southern Dharma Kimchi Recipe from our forthcoming cookbook

Anthony is a native Oklahoman who has lived with his family-of-choice in Western North Carolina for nearly eight years. Anthony's service at Southern Dharma has been primarily kitchen related, and he has served non-consecutively for a little over five years in that capacity. A student of Soto Zen, and other Buddhist and tribal wisdom traditions, Anthony enjoys writing, gardening, cooking, and playing games with his family. Contact Anthony at [email protected].